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Aminuet (/ˌmɪnjuˈɛt/; also spelledmenuet) is asocial dance of French origin for two people, usually written in3
4 time but always played as if in6
8 (compoundduple metre) to reflect the step pattern of the dance. The English word was adapted from the Italianminuetto and the Frenchmenuet.
The term also describes the musical form that accompanies the dance, which subsequently developed more fully, often with a longermusical form called theminuet and trio, and was much used as amovement in the early classicalsymphony. While often stylized in instrumental forms, composers of the period would have been familiar with the popular dance.
The name may refer to the short steps,pas menus, taken in the dance,[1] or else be derived from thebranle à mener oramener, popular group dances in early 17th-century France.[2] The minuet was traditionally said to have descended from thebransle de Poitou, though there is no evidence making a clear connection between these two dances. The earliest treatise to mention the possible connection of the name to the expressionpas menus is Gottfried Taubert'sRechtschaffener Tantzmeister, published in Leipzig in 1717, but this source does not describe the steps as being particularly small or dainty.[3] At the period when it was most fashionable it was controlled, ceremonious and graceful.[1]
The name of this dance is also given to a musical composition written in the same time andrhythm, though when not accompanying an actual dance the pace was quicker.[1] Stylistically refined minuets, apart from the social dance context, were introduced—toopera at first—byJean-Baptiste Lully, who included no fewer than 92 of them in his theatrical works[2] and in the late 17th century the minuet was adopted into thesuite, such as some of the suites ofJohann Sebastian Bach andGeorge Frideric Handel. Among Italian and some French composers the minuet was often considerably quicker and livelier and was sometimes written in3
8 or6
8 time[5] Because the tempo of a minuet was not standard, the tempo directiontempo di minuetto was ambiguous unless qualified by another direction, as it sometimes was.[6]
Initially, before its adoption in contexts other than social dance, the minuet was usually inbinary form, with two repeated sections of usually eightbars each. But the second section eventually expanded, resulting in a kind ofternary form. The second (or middle) minuet provided a form of contrast by means of different key (although in many works, the second minuet stayed in the same key as the first minuet), orchestration, and thematic material. On a larger scale, two such minuets might be further combined, so that the first minuet was followed by a second one and then by a repetition of the first. The whole form might in any case be repeated as long as the dance lasted.
Around the time ofJean-Baptiste Lully, it became a common practice to score this middle section for atrio (such as twooboes and abassoon, as is common in Lully). As a result, this middle section came to be called the minuet'strio, even when no trace of such an orchestration remains.[7] The overall structure is called rounded binary orminuet form:[8]
| A | B | A or A′ |
| I (→ V) | V or I(or otherclosely related) | I |
After these developments by Lully, composers occasionally inserted a modified repetition of the first (A) section or a section that contrasted with both the A section and what was thereby rendered the third or C section, yielding the form A–A′–B–A or A–B–C–A, respectively; an example of the latter is the third movement of Mozart's Serenade No. 13 in G major,K. 525, popularly known under the titleEine kleine Nachtmusik.
A livelier form of the minuet simultaneously developed into thescherzo (which was generally also coupled with a trio). This term came into existence approximately fromBeethoven onwards, but the form itself can be traced back toHaydn.
Theminuet and trio eventually became the standard third movement in the four-movementclassicalsymphony,Johann Stamitz being the first to employ it thus with regularity.[9]
An example of the true form of the minuet is to be found inDon Giovanni.[1]
A famous example of a more recent instrumental work in minuet form isIgnacy Jan Paderewski'sMinuet in G.
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Minuet".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 564.
Media related toMinuet at Wikimedia Commons
